Caroline kept quietly in bed, letting herself reknit outside and in. When she sat up to sip a mug of Mrs. Scott’s velvety bean soup, long threads of soreness flared through the muscles beneath her ribs. Inside, Caroline felt as though she needed a good tidying up. Everything had become so accustomed to leaning aside to make room for Carrie that the space where the baby had been still remained, an entity of its own. It was a queer, hollow feeling, not unlike the sudden emptiness of a room after a dance, with all its furniture pushed against the walls. The passage Carrie had traveled had a lingering warmth to it, like a fever slowly fading. Caroline felt its tender outline no matter how still she lay. When she passed her water, the soft ring of swollen flesh radiated in protest.
She woke when the child nuzzled at her breast, drawing out a few teaspoons of broth-colored fluid at a time. As she nursed, Caroline watched Charles and Mary and Laura as a stranger might see them. What she saw captivated her. Just like Charles, she was forever saying of Laura. A certain crinkle of Laura’s snub nose as she laughed or the set of her chin when she was vexed was enough to make Caroline think, Just like her pa. Yet to someone like Mrs. Scott, who had not spent years tallying their similarities, Laura was simply Laura—a boisterous, eager little girl, shy, yet given to impulsiveness, where Charles was genial and even-tempered. Mirror images of each other, Caroline mused: the same, yet reversed.
Mary was no less a revelation. Proud at first of the way Mary laid the table and swept the floor without being asked, Caroline began to notice how Mary put herself always within Mrs. Scott’s view as she worked. Busy getting underfoot, Caroline so often said. But the way Mary paraded about with the broom, it was suddenly clear the child was not so much eager to help as to be seen helping. The floor was clean, and still Mary swept doggedly at the boards, glancing at Mrs. Scott more and more pointedly. With a sorrowful pang, Caroline realized that her little helpmeet cared not at all for the household tasks she performed so willingly. Mary mimicked them only for Caroline’s approval.
Caroline’s fingers worried the hem of the baby’s swaddling as she watched the vignette playing out before her. Mary swept on, incapable of understanding that Mrs. Scott might have no praise for her at all. A flush of mingled shame and pity crept up Caroline’s neck as she grasped her own mistake: in trying to keep Mary unconscious of her beauty, Caroline had instead marred it with another kind of conceit. Her eyes retreated to the little one in her arms, unwilling to watch her eldest daughter grope so openly for admiration. Likely Mrs. Scott had seen Mary’s performance for what it was right away and did not care to applaud it. Every swish of the broom in her ears swept the blush further across Caroline’s skin. She could see it as well as feel it now, spreading down her chest toward Carrie. It must not reach the baby, she chided herself. Her embarrassment did not feel strong enough to put the child in peril, but all the same Caroline would not risk tarnishing her. But she could not stop it at Mary’s expense. Caroline herself had cultivated Mary’s pride with her unstinting praise. Showing her approval now, with Mrs. Scott looking on, would only worsen it. Yet at the same time Caroline could not bear the possibility that the bulk of Mary’s pleasures had become secondhand, her smiles from others’ satisfaction rather than her own delight. Anything less than a compliment, no matter how gentle, would cut the child bone-deep. Caroline’s chest tightened as she fumbled for a solution, and she knew Carrie should not take one more swallow.
Caroline slipped a fingertip into the corner of Carrie’s mouth and broke her lips from the nipple. “Mary,” she said as Carrie’s mouth worked in confusion, “would you like to hold the baby?” The broom stilled. Mary’s face went round with awe. Caroline propped Charles’s pillow into the corner beside her and patted the mattress. Mary came scrambling so fast, Caroline almost laughed. Mary arranged herself with her feet jutting straight out and her elbows bent, palms up, as if she were about to receive a stack of planks.
Caroline laid the baby across Mary’s lap. Mary sat stone-still, as though so much as a blink might make Carrie cry. Paralyzed with wonder and terror, Caroline thought, just as she herself had been the first time Polly laid Mary into her arms.
Bemused, Mrs. Scott came to stand over the bed with her fists sunk into her hips. “Well?” she asked Mary. “What do you think of your baby sister?”
“She’s heavy,” Mary said.
Caroline felt her cheeks dimple. Carrie weighed a scant five pounds, she guessed, but for a child accustomed to a rag baby made of cotton and wool, Carrie’s heft was considerable. Mary looked and looked. Carrie was such a small baby, but Mary studied her as though there were too much of her to see all at once. Carrie’s face wrinkled, then puckered, and she gave a cry that struck the air like a splatter.
“Here, now,” Mrs. Scott said, leaning across the bed for the baby. But Mary put her face beside Carrie’s crinkled red ear and whispered, “Shhhhhhhhhh.” Carrie did.
Mrs. Scott chuckled. “She’ll make a good little mother herself one day,” she said, and Mary glowed.
Mrs. Scott would have stayed Saturday, to get supper and help with the children’s baths, she said, but Charles presented her with an enormous jackrabbit and insisted she head home in time to roast it for her family. “I can manage the supper and the bathing,” Charles promised.
And he did. He fitted a spit into the fireplace and turned two plump prairie hens on it until their skins glistened and the juice ran hissing into the coals. Then he carefully carved a breast from the bones and brought it to Caroline on a plate, alongside a heap of sliced Indian breadroot and a bowl of blackberries bobbing in fresh milk. Mary and Laura washed and wiped the dishes while Charles brought in the washtub and put water on to boil.
Caroline watched him line the dishpan with a towel, then mix hot and cold water and dip his elbow in to test it. He set the pan down on the hearth and came to the side of the bed. She started to shift the baby toward him, but Charles reached up over her head, into the crevice formed by the meeting of the wall and the roof and brought down a bear grease tin. He opened it and laid a tissue-wrapped packet in her palm. “For you and Carrie,” he said.
Caroline turned back the soft blue wrapping. Inside lay a creamy cake of pressed soap, pale and smooth as butter. The faintest whiff of roses brushed her nostrils. Her lips parted in wonder. “Charles, where did you ever—”
“On our way through Independence.”
Months ago. She saw herself sitting on that wagon seat outside the store, wary of the Indians, wishing that Charles would only hurry. And all the while he had been inside, picturing this moment in his mind and choosing something small and fine to mark it. With all his worries over prices and land offices, he had thought of this—of her. She looked up at him, her eyes welling. “Oh, Charles.” It was not much more than a whisper. He rubbed at the back of his neck, sheepish and pleased, then bent to gather up Carrie for her bath.